John Dickerson
CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King on Tuesday speculated on a “secret” Republican candidate who might oppose Donald Trump in a 2020 GOP primary. Talking to new CBS contributor Jeff Flake, King noted, “You made it clear you were not thinking about running against Donald Trump.”
CBS This Morning co-host John Dickerson on Monday worried that Joe Biden would be too moderate in tone as a presidential candidate, describing the Democrat as a “let us reason together” politician. This, of course, is the same Democrat who had an American Conservative Union score of 12 and who savaged conservative Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork in 1987. Not exactly reaching across the aisle.
After they freaked out about President Trump’s national emergency declaration regarding the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, the Big Three broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) seemed reluctant to report on new numbers from Customs and Border Protection saying they had caught 76,000 illegal immigrants in February. While The New York Times had it as a front-page story on Wednesday, NBC News completely omitted it from their morning and evening news programs.
CBS This Morning journalists on Tuesday spent an entire segment hyping the glories of Finland and the country's free stuff, chiding the United States for falling behind. With very little discussion on the nation's high taxes, foreign correspondent Holly Williams and the show’s hosts praised the country’s paid maternity leave, hospital care and even supposedly free nannies.
The journalists at CBS This Morning on Friday threw softball after softball at fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The co-hosts even invited McCabe, who was dismissed due to lack of candor, to weigh in on the reliability of witness Michael Cohen. Guest co-host Alex Wagner wondered, “Mr. McCabe, the country watched Michael Cohen testify to Congress, congressional oversight, this week. Did you find him a credible witness?”
On Wednesday, the hosts of CBS This Morning welcomed climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe on the program to offer tips on how to best sell the climate change agenda. Much of the discussion focused on ways to convince “doubters,” prompting co-host Bianna Golodryga to bemoan: “But why does it have to become political, I guess is the question that I’m asking, and why is this a debate at all?”
In his first interview since announcing his 2020 presidential campaign, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders called on the media to help sell his brand of socialism to American voters. Talking to CBS This Morning co-host John Dickerson for an interview aired on Tuesday, Sanders dismissed questions about the details of his radical Medicare-for-all proposal and lectured that the press must “explain the truth” of what a “good deal” it would be for people.
Now that presidential candidate Kamala Harris has called for the elimination of private health insurance, a move that would impact 177 million Americans, CBS has joined the fight to push the rest of 2020 Democratic field farther left. This Morning co-host John Dickerson on Thursday warned candidate Pete Buttigieg against “nibbling around the edges” and urged him to go bold (meaning far-left).
After Kamala Harris called for the abolition of the private health insurance market on CNN, Monday, ABC and NBC’s morning shows on Tuesday skipped the 2020 Democratic presidential candidate telling Jake Tapper: “Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.” Private insurance currently covers 177 million people, so you think this might be controversial. However, only CBS This Morning bothered to mention it and only in a breezy, unconcerned way. In the 8am hour, co-host John Dickerson explained, “Kamala Harris says all Americans should have Medicare and it's time to move on from private insurance.”
On Monday's CBS This Morning, as Seth Doane reported live from Rome, the CBS reporter made a major flub as he actually stated that Pope Francis "spoke out strongly in favor of abortion" without catching his mistake. The misstatement went uncorrected as the anchors did not notice the error either.
The journalists at CBS This Morning couldn’t quite believe that Chris Christie would disagree with the guns-drawn, predawn raid on Roger Stone. Co-host Norah O’Donnell icily deemed it “interesting that the former New Jersey governor offered a different take. Christie appeared to discuss his new book, but more than half of the interview was spent on the Stone raid.
For his Reporter’s Notebook segment on Friday’s CBS This Morning, co-host John Dickerson took the journalistic equivalent of Facebook’s ten-year challenge, fondly looking back at the “hope” and “good relations” of Barack Obama’s inauguration in January of 2009. He then lamented how “grim” things were in Washington a decade later, under President Trump.